Mountain Review: Keystone

MOUNTAIN SCORE

#9 in Colorado

#18 Overall

WRITTEN REVIEW

MOUNTAIN STATS

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CATEGORY BREAKDOWN 

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Snow:

Resiliency:

Size:

Terrain Diversity:

Challenge:

Lifts:

Crowd Flow:

Facilities:

Navigation:

Mountain Aesthetic:

GOOD TO KNOW

1-Day Ticket: $169-$269

Pass Affiliation: Epic Pass

On-site Lodging: Yes

Aprés-ski: Moderate

Nearest Cities: Denver (2 hrs)

Recommended Ability Level:

  +   Pros

• Solid mix of groomed, mogul, and tree terrain

• High-alpine bowl terrain for all ability levels

• Uniquely-designed footprint

• Night skiing

  –   Cons

• Long travel time to and from furthest mountain areas

• Smaller lift-served footprint than many competitors

• Very limited true expert features

MOUNTAIN STATS

Skiable Footprint: 3,148 acres

Total Footprint: 4,434 acres

Lift-Serviced Terrain: 61%

Top Elevation: 12,408 ft

Vertical Drop: 3,128 ft

Lifts: 20

Trails: 128

Beginner: 12%

Intermediate: 39%

Advanced/Expert: 49%

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Mountain Review

With more than 3,000 acres of terrain within driving distance of Denver, Keystone has historically competed with the best in Colorado—at least on paper. The resort has always offered easy access to plenty of wide groomers, steep bump runs, and fun tree areas, but in years’ past, the area’s practical size was hampered by the lack of direct lift access to a substantial percentage of its footprint, including all of its above-treeline bowl terrain. But in late 2023, Keystone finally added a lift to its high-alpine footprint, providing a long-awaited solution for this significant shortcoming.

Snow and Resiliency

When it comes to a destination ski vacation, high-quality snow is key. And while Keystone does fit the bill, it falls a bit behind its closest competitors in this department. The resort sees slightly less accumulation than the best Colorado resorts each year, and major snow events that hit places such as Breckenridge and Arapahoe Basin often dump way less on Keystone. That being said, Keystone does hold its snow well in its below-treeline areas, and the resort employs extensive snowmaking to ensure resiliency and open terrain early compared to other resorts. Keystone has made significant investments in its snowmaking infrastructure in recent years, and the enhancements have been really effective at allowing the resort to build an artificial base. In fact, Keystone’s early-season snowmaking is so effective that the resort often opens in mid or late October, making it either one of first resorts—if not the first—to open up for the season in North America.

TRAIL MAP

Terrain Layout

When you first get to Keystone, it looks pretty unimposing for a major Colorado ski resort. Both bases sit on the front side of Dercum Mountain, which is a peak mostly comprising gentler slopes with below-treeline terrain. Most runs in this area are mellower groomers, but a few sections of steeper bump runs exist as well.

But when you get to the top of the front side, you’ll not only see the start of the slopes down the back side of Dercum, but also not just one, but two additional peaks of trails up ahead—these include North Peak, which is immediately adjacent to Dercum Mountain and home to a wide variety of intermediate and advanced runs, and The Outback, which also hosts this level of terrain but specializes in glades. It’s a sight to behold seeing the ski resort continue on as extensively as it does, and you really have to see it to believe it.

Bergman Bowl Expansion Terrain

But North Peak and Outback aren’t the only trail pods beyond Keystone’s front side anymore. For the 2023-24 season, the resort finally expanded its lift service into the high-alpine, installing a new chairlift up the eponymous Keystone Peak into the resort’s Bergman Bowl. This new terrain zone is accessible from the top of North Peak, with a distinctive mix of trails for all ability levels, including some uniquely accessible runs for beginners and intermediates. But while a great addition to the resort, the new Bergman Bowl isn’t exactly a substitute for the vast bowls of Vail, Copper, or even Breckenridge—the above-treeline bowl section doesn’t last particularly long, and the lower half of the lift line mainly includes glades and tree-defined trails. However, Keystone was long one of the only serious Colorado destinations to not offer any lift-served bowls at all, and the resort finally checks that box.

Beginner Terrain

On paper, Keystone looks like a pretty good ski destination resort for beginners. The resort offers top-to-bottom green-rated skiing on its Dercum Mountain front side, and the new Bergman Bowl expansion adds the stunning new Ten Mile green trail, which offers stunning panoramas and an above-treeline experience that’s really hard to come by on terrain of this ability level. The Bergman Bowl project has also added a green route down to the Ruby and Santiago Express lifts for the first time, making the back side a lot more accessible to beginners than it used to be. But while Keystone’s green runs might look compelling on the surface, the resort is hampered by a limited quantity of this type of terrain, with only one primary green route down from each of the Dercum and Bergman Bowl areas. While the expanded footprint has helped, guests will still want to prepare for extensive congestion on the Dercum side’s Schoolmarm run. One will be hard pressed to find any other singular trail that experiences the same density of skier traffic as Schoolmarm—especially at the end of the day—so if one is proficient enough to do so, it’s prudent to avoid this trail at all costs.

Intermediate Terrain

Keystone becomes a substantially more compelling mountain for skiers and riders of intermediate proficiency. Every mountain area is home to moderately-sloped cruisers, with a range of traditional below-treeline trails, gladed runs, and high-alpine bowls available throughout the resort. A few blue trails throughout the North Peak, Bergman Bowl, and Outback areas often remain ungroomed, making for solid environments to learn moguls. While not egregiously overrated, some of Keystone’s blues are on the steeper side, and might be rated as blacks at certain competing ski resorts.

Terrain Parks

Keystone also offers a pretty compelling terrain park, but it’s not exactly the world-class setup that existed in previous years. The Area 51 park is designed with progression in mind, and it offers a range of rollers, boxes, rails, and jumps ranging from extra-small to large. But the massive superpipes and jumps of years’ past seem to have been relegated to the history books, with the park taking more of a family-friendly shape than one designed for the pros.

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Advanced Terrain

In today’s world, Keystone is perhaps best suited for advanced skiers and riders. Once one gets beyond the fairly mellow front side, the resort is home to a range of long, trying bump runs that really put a strain on one’s endurance. Guests will find an abundance of advanced tree terrain all around the resort as well, with the most standout trees existing in the North Peak and Outback areas thanks to varying glade widths and better powder retention than the front side. The Bergman Bowl lift has opened up access to a huge swath of advanced bowls and glades that used to be hike-to only, and the difficulty of traversing to these sections mean they still hold snow fairly well. The resort also grooms a handful of black runs on a regular basis, and combined with the sheer length of some of these trails, this allows for some of the fastest bombable trail segments anywhere in North America. But don’t actually try to bomb these runs, because Keystone’s safety patrol will pull your pass.

Expert Terrain

Keystone isn’t half bad for expert visitors either, although it wouldn’t be our first pick for those looking for truly extreme terrain. Keystone’s most demanding trails are its Windows glades, which involve especially steep pitches and obstacles such as bare rocks, tree stumps, and a few hidden cliffs. But besides these few out-of-the-way glades, Keystone is much more of an endurance mountain than a technically challenging one, and those looking for especially hair-raising features may want to go elsewhere.

Hike-to Terrain

Even with the new Bergman Bowl lift, a handful of Keystone’s advanced and expert resort areas remain hike-to only. The North and South Peak areas off the Outback lift still mostly require hiking to reach, as do parts of the Windows trees. The north face of the Independence Bowl can be reached from the Bergman chair but still requires hiking to get out of, and if one wants to ski or ride the south face of this bowl, one must actually hike twice—the first time up from the bottom of the Independence Bowl basin to actually get to the runs in this area, and then the second time to actually get back to the lifts. But at least in the case of the ones that aren’t heinously time and energy consuming, the hikes can be well worth it. In the case of the Windows and Outback hikes, a 5-10 minute uphill jaunt can bring you to some amazing powder troves. And if one does end up hiking all the way to the most remote mountain areas, the terrain is as isolated as one will ever get within the bounds of an actual ski resort. Speaking of remoteness—Keystone’s longest hikes can take quite some time to complete, and the resort starts closing them daily as early as 1pm, so be sure to get a move on if you want to do one of them during your day at the resort.

Discontinuation of Cat Skiing

Unfortunately, one of the casualties of Keystone’s new Bergman Bowl lift has been its cat skiing experiences. While the resort used to offer a range of per-ride and private snowcat trips, these unique opportunities are now a thing of the past, meaning that anyone who wants to access terrain that isn’t served directly by lift won’t be able to bypass the hikes with a snowcat anymore.

On-Mountain Facilities

But at least after a day of hiking, Keystone offers a number of convenient lodges to stop in at across Dercum Mountain and North Peak. These are your typical ski resort cafeterias without much in the way of a local feel, but the three mid-mountain lodges are generally equipped for the demand, and the two North Peak options offer generous outdoor seating that allows for sunbathing on nice days. Food options are pricey and for the most part just okay in quality, but if you do have to stop in, the barbeque at Labonte’s Cabin, which is at the bottom of the Ruby and Santiago lifts, is pretty good.

Ease of Navigation

Despite its magnitude, getting around lift-serviced areas at Keystone isn’t horrible thanks to clear signage and well-placed lifts. However, it does take a long time and multiple lifts to travel to the furthest mountain areas by nature of the resort’s stacked-mountain design. Most frontside and North Peak trails do have enough of a slope to allow guests to keep their speed, but the feeder run down into Outback is pretty flat, and it can require some catwalking if you’re not careful. It’s worth noting that cell service in the Outback area is pretty much nonexistent, so be careful not to lose people in your group when you’re out there.

Lifts and Crowd Flow

Thanks to a fleet of mostly high-speed lifts and two gondolas, the lift setup at Keystone mostly impresses. The ride up from the bases to the top of Dercum Mountain is a long one, but it’s held down by the River Run eight-passenger gondola, a lift route consisting of two six-packs, and one high-speed quad that mainly functions in a helper capacity. Every major lift on North Peak is high-speed as well, as is the isolated Outback Express. There are multiple lift options at most major junctions, leading to very few resort chokepoints, which helps control crowds on busy days—which Keystone sees a lot of during peak times. The new Bergman Express six-pack is a great addition to Keystone’s lift fleet, providing quick transportation to the high-alpine and expanding the resort’s lift-served vertical drop by an additional 220 feet. 

But there’s one exception to Keystone’s modern lift infrastructure. The only way to exit the Outback area is by taking the Wayback fixed-grip quad, an exasperatingly slow lift that somehow hasn’t been upgraded over the years. There are no lodges or facilities at Outback, so anyone trying to escape an influx of bad weather or just needing a break will have to bear through this lift. The pressure on this lift has only increased this year, with some of the advanced-level trails from the Bergman Bowl lift filtering directly down to it. Riding this thing feels especially punishing after a day of exclusively detachable lifts. Rumors of an upgrade have been swirling for years, but nothing has materialized.

Night Skiing

It’s worth noting that Keystone offers night skiing, a rarity among major Rocky Mountain resorts. Typically open Fridays, Saturdays, and holidays, the experience offers only limited terrain but covers the entire vertical of Dercum Mountain and the whole A51 terrain park. However, night skiing hours have decreased in recent years, and operations now only go until 7pm, rather than the previous 8, 9, and even 10pm close times of years’ past. In addition, Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday night skiing outside of holiday periods have been relegated to the history books as well. As a result of these circumstances, it’s a lot harder to take advantage of Keystone for some after-hours turns than it used to be.

Getting There

Like other I-70 Corridor ski areas, Keystone’s closest city is Denver. With no traffic, the resort is about two hours from the Denver International Airport—however, weekend drives often come with serious backups on Interstate 70, which is the only practical road to the resort from the east. Visitors can also fly into the Eagle County Regional Airport, which is just over an hour from the resort but typically pricier to fly into. A number of shuttle services exist to and from both airports.

Parking

Keystone offers a decent amount of free parking at its River Run base area, although the slopeside lot does fill up quickly during weekends and holidays. Once the River Run lot fills up, guests can park in overflow lots with shuttle service to the slopes. If you don’t want to take the shuttle and the free lot is full, Keystone does offer some preferred parking too, as well as a few priority spots reserved for carpools of four or more or families carrying kids 12 or under.

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Lodging

For those looking to stay on site, Keystone offers plenty of options. The resort isn’t exactly bargain basement, but hotels and condos are more reasonably priced for what you get than at competing mountains, and they often have hot tubs or pools. There are some solid hotels and townhomes within a short driving distance of the resort, but don’t expect a true town outside the base village like you’ll find at Breckenridge.

Après-Ski

Thanks to its walkable base village and some nearby bars and restaurants on the access road, Keystone offers an enjoyable après-ski scene. Multiple happy-hour bars can be found in the base village, and on various nights, visitors will find a few bars with live music, DJs, or even trivia. However, Keystone’s après scene isn’t nearly as extensive as that of nearby Breckenridge or even Vail, and those visiting for more than a day or two may start to feel limited in terms of available activities.

Verdict

Ultimately, Keystone offers a uniquely-designed footprint, excellent glade and mogul terrain, and thanks to the new Bergman Bowl lift, some of the best lower-level bowl terrain in the state of Colorado. But while it’s gotten a lot more competitive, Keystone still doesn’t have quite the lift-served skiable footprint or quality of expert terrain to beat out the best resorts in the state. Some people won’t be able to get enough of the terrain here, while others may find this resort better as a day trip from another nearby mountain.

Pricing

Keystone’s lift ticket prices have historically been lower than that of other Colorado competitors, but the lift tickets these days are just plain ridiculous, with 1-day adult rates now going for up to $269 if you buy at the window in March or on a holiday.

Keystone is on the Epic Pass, including the Epic Day Pass product which is essentially just a flexible day ticket, so if you plan on visiting Keystone next year, be sure to pick up one of these products before they’re off sale in early December.